Slavery/liberty paradox in the u.s literarture and history

Early North American literature helped define the United States as a nation founded on ideals of liberty, with the Old World, Christianity, and the English language as the national patrimony. However, U.S history from the 18th all the way to the 19th century is marked by warfare, slavery and genocide against native indigenous people. These events present a deep contradiction in early U.S writingson liberty. The reading and discussion of traditional literature alongside work that were not much studied expose this profound national paradox of slavery and liberty. When studied in depth, writings of people such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Phillis Wheatley allow us to understand a bit better the incongruence in the U.S literature.
Thomas Jefferson was one of the foundingfathers of the United States; therefore, one of the most important people in the history of the nation and its literature. In his writings The Declaration of Independence and Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson presents two completely different views regarding the slaves. In The Declaration of Independence he talks about how men were created the same and how everyone have the right to be happyand free: “…that all men are created equal; that they were endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure this rights, governments are instituted among men, …” As we can see, he strongly believed in a rule by a government that represented a population of citizens all seen as fairly equal in the eyesof the law. However, in 1781, he wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia, "I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind." With this words Jefferson contradicts his previews thoughts, showing how his beliefs on equality and doesn’t applyto everyone, it just includes the whites. In addition to this, Jefferson was a slaveholder himself. He had a 5,000-acre plantation, owned hundreds of slaves during his lifetime and he even sold more than a hundred of them to pay debt. He relied heavily on slavery to support his family’s way of living.
On the other hand, we have Phillis Wheatley; a black slave born in Africa and brought to Bostonin 1761. She was purchased by John Whitley in order to be a companion for his wife, Savannah. If it is true that the Wheatlys taught her to read and write, and helped encouraged her poetry, it is also true that she was living in between two extremely different kind of life. The fact that she was a black slave but at the same time she was welcome to this wealthy family of white people, herwritings speaks to the white establishment, not to fellow slaves. Her references to her own situation of enslavement are restrained, maybe because she was scared to speak her true emotions and feelings. But in her poem On Being Brought from Africa to America; one of the few poems which refers to slavery, Wheatly says: “’Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land, / Taught my benighted soul to understand/That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too…” It is interesting how the use of the language resembles the European way of speak; as in pagan land, which was the way the white people refers to the African land. It is also important to notice her notion towards her enslavement as an act of mercy from her buyers. She sees her slavery as a positive event because, in consequence, her benighted soullearned that there’s a God that will, at the end, gave us salvation. The word us including blacks and whites. (“Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, / May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.´) As seen in this poem, Phillis Wheatly uses European terms to defend and expose her position on slavery; therefore exposing at the same time the paradox found in the history of American...